What the hell is a 'soul' anyway?

[Whateverist]

I just make this shit up.  Your welcome.

But it was the concept of "soul" which I was addressing, not personhood or personality.  So I'm firmly on speculative ground, nothing very sciency about it, no journals to quote.  However there is a nice video on youtube based on a TED talk by Ian McGilchist about the divided brain theory that informs my speculation.

https://youtu.be/dFs9WO2B8uI

[IATIA]

Where exactly on the evolutionary chain did the soul come in?

Me me me! I know!

In a true apologist form, the soul was "breathed" into Adam. It was at that point the 'animal' became 'human'.

[Drich]

This is a series of questions I always ask when people start talking about souls. I'd like to collect the local soul-believers' answers on this topic, but if you don't believe in souls, feel free to add more questions.

What is a soul?

What is it made of?

Does it interact with the material world?

If it does, how can we measure its activity based on its interactions with the material world?

If it doesn't, what does it explain that can't be better explained by a materialist solution?

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bioc...e-says-yes  

http://www.mindopenerz.com/does-the-soul...-says-yes/

 The above is a couple links to an articles that provide evidence for the soul/what psychology defines as a soul

[IATIA]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bioc...e-says-yes  

http://www.mindopenerz.com/does-the-soul...-says-yes/

 The above is a couple links to an articles that provide evidence for the soul/what psychology defines as a soul

There is no evidence whatsoever in either link. The first changes midstream to accommodate the conclusion (without evidence) and the second link is strictly opinion.

[robvalue]

Where exactly on the evolutionary chain did the soul come in?

Me me me! I know!

In a true apologist form, the soul was "breathed" into Adam. It was at that point the 'animal' became 'human'.

Oh yeah! I forgot.

[Drich]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bioc...e-says-yes  

http://www.mindopenerz.com/does-the-soul...-says-yes/

 The above is a couple links to an articles that provide evidence for the soul/what psychology defines as a soul

There is no evidence whatsoever in either link.  The first changes midstream to accommodate the conclusion (without evidence) and the second link is strictly opinion.

What those links do is point to is the existence, definition and identification of a conscientiousness/awareness that is not explained by, or can not be explained by what 'science' is designed to identify and catalog. Which means because we can confirm the existence of "I", and yet 'science' can not explain it.. Leads to the conclusion your demand for 'scientific proof' is not the standard in which a soul can be measured or identified. In short 'science' or the proof it can provide can not support or DENY the existence of a soul.

Which means that the proof of a soul lies I its definition. In the article the word is defined as our consciousness the fact that most of us can claim consciousness means we have all the "proof" we need.

[IATIA]

Which means that the proof of a soul lies I its definition. In the article the word is defined as our consciousness the fact that most of us can claim consciousness means we have all the "proof" we need.

There is no proof of this 'imaginary soul', only opinion or belief. I was not arguing the existence of consciousness. And like I said previously, all living things are aware and those with a brain are conscious. So if you are to have me believe that consciousness precipitates a soul. then you must accept that all living things with a brain have a soul.

[Ravenshire]

This is a series of questions I always ask when people start talking about souls. I'd like to collect the local soul-believers' answers on this topic, but if you don't believe in souls, feel free to add more questions.

The term soul was first introduced by the Greek philosophers. Its the immaterial part of you, a part of the immaterial world.

The Greek philosophers realized that Mathematics is also a part of the immaterial world.

The soul, like math, has no weight or mass, you can't see it and it doesn't alter light.

Like math, you can study its effects because the soul gives human life its fundamental essence and value.

This concept became more refined after Christian teaching met the philosophies of Plato, Aristoteles, and Socrates.

The human soul houses the core of human desire, and as such is an important basis of our understanding of personhood.

This has implications on human dignity, human rights, responsibilities, and freedom. If you ignore these things, you see important implications, the culmination of which are the Gulags of the Soviet Union for instance, or the Holocaust, or the carpet bombing of Dresden and perhaps the destruction of Hiroshima.  

All these things (dignity, rights, responsibilities, freedom), like the soul, are immaterial.

Value, like the soul, is also immaterial.

Value can generate bills of money from seemingly "nothing". In material terms, a stack of bills is nothing but paper. But money can be put to use to alter material things, such as the great cathedrals and churches of Europe, which are direct expressions on the effect of the soul on matter.

Similarly, persons in material terms are seemingly nothing but DNA, or ribonucleic acids, but they can generate ideas, hopes and dreams, and put values into reality. Say for example, I value my kids, I can alter reality by reading to them at night. I made that value a reality in the irreversible past. DNA can't do that. On the other hand, our material brain is the most complex thing we know of in the entire universe. In material terms there is no way that we have any idea what a thought, or a value, or a soul is.

Good night, kids.

Evidence for all the bare assertions of the properties of souls, please.

[Esquilax]

Which means that the proof of a soul lies I its definition. In the article the word is defined as our consciousness the fact that most of us can claim consciousness means we have all the "proof" we need.

Which is exactly as flawed an argument as defining god as a coffee cup, pointing at a coffee cup, and saying that therefore we have sufficient evidence of christianity.

[Ronkonkoma]

No reason to get mad. I might be just a dumb-ass country doc, who doesn't know his elbow from a pimple on his ass, but for the sake of arguing about the soul it matters little if I say ribonucleic acid or deoxyribonucleic acid.

No, it does, because they are two different kinds of nucleic acid that have very different functions. It's like saying that the internal intercostal muscles and the external intercostal muscles are the same thing. They aren't, and it's really imprecise and a sign of ignorance on the subject to say they are.

My point is, there are implications on our understanding of the soul. Implications, that determine a civil and just society, just as the ancient Greek philosophers are the rogenitors of our modern democracy and western set of values.

Sure we can respect human life as long as it is convenient for us to do that, and as long as that seems like the nice thing to do... But as soon as becomes inconvenient?
What stops us from interpreting life to begin as soon as baby is born, versus at the moment of conception?
Does the mere presence of blastocysts and DNA constitute personhood?
Are human zygotes persons???
At what point do they become persons, and who is the one to define that???
Are drug companies that produce the morning after pill competent to re-define the start of human life, so that technically their pills do not cause abortion?

We enter a lot of muddy and dangerous ground when we ignore the soul, the basis of human identity and dignity.

This is an argument from consequences.

Apart from that, how would you test your hypothesis that there *is* a soul, let alone that a zygote or a blastocyst have one? I, for one, don't think that they are a human being yet, because, well, they are lumps of cells and lack the structures that make a human (or any animal for that matters) conscious and aware of its surroundings.

That does not mean that everyone should have abortions, or that I don't value the life of a zygote or a blastocyst, just that they are not conscious, pain feeling human beings. And seeing as the waters get muddy, it's up to the individual's conscience to decide whether taking the pill or going to the abortion clinic are moral decisions. If I were a woman, I don't think I'd do it except in the most horrible of cases (eg. Getting pregnant after being raped), and I would much rather give the baby up for adoption if I knew that I would not be able to raise him/her in a decent way. But different people think differently, so in cases like this, there has to be freedom of choice for each individual.

The point is, the consequences don't matter. The consequences of the inexistence of the soul don't determine its existence. Try again.

I stand corrected on the makeup of DNA.

I'm talking about consequences because that was your question.

like I said the soul is not material so you can't test it. It's bmvery silly to ask for an empiric proof for the soul. So what you're left with is to see how does it affect matter. I gave very concrete examples. sorry, I can't do any better.